Susan Blackmore's bold and fascinating book The Meme Machine; pushes the new theory of memetics farther than anyone else has, including its originator Richard Dawkins. The reader should already be well-acquainted with the concepts of memes and Universal Darwinism before tackling this book. Those who are not would do well to first read Dawkins' The Selfish Gene (and even better to also read Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea).

Dawkins himself wrote the foreword to this book, giving it his enthusiastic endorsement and providing some enlightening remarks about the origin of the meme concept. He concedes however, that his original intentions were quite a bit more modest, and that Blackmore has carried the concept further than he had envisioned.

The central thesis of this book is that imitation is what makes humans truly different from other animals, and what drives almost all aspects of human culture. A meme then, is a unit of imitation. Anything that can be passed from one person to another through imitation -- such as a song, a poem, a cookie recipe, fashion, the idea of building a bridge or making pottery -- is an example of a meme. In Dawkins' "selfish gene" concept, from a gene's point of view a person is just a way for the gene to make more copies of itself. Similarly, Blackmore claims that from a meme's point of view, we humans are "meme machines" for making and spreading more copies of the meme.

This book is highly speculative. It goes beyond what is directly deducible from the scientific evidence. However to Blackmore's credit she does clearly highlight the areas of speculation. She also points out the testable predictions made by her theories, and describes possible experiments that could be performed to validate or falsify them.

One such prediction is that specific neural mechanisms would be found in the brain that support imitation -- the key requirement for replication of memes. The recent discovery of mirror neurons seems to satisfy this prediction and provide a powerful validation of the theory.

This book is ambitious. It purports to be nothing less than a comprehensive theory which answers such major scientific questions as the "big brain" problem, and the evolutionary origins of language, altruism, and religion -- all currently unresolved problems. Blackmore's presentation of these issues is persuasive and insightful, though in some instances she has overstated her case. For example, while memes may have been a significant causal factor in the origin of language, it is not necessary to adopt a purely non-functional explanation for language as Blackmore does. We are not obliged for example, to imagine that language did not arise partly because it increased the fitness of hunter-gatherer groups by allowing them to communicate the location of game or to better coordinate group hunts, thereby making them more successful than groups without language.

The most controversial part of the book is likely to the last two chapters, where Blackmore discusses the concept of the "self", the real you which holds beliefs, desires, and intentions. Like Dennett, Blackmore believes the idea of a "self" is an illusion but unlike Dennett she does not see it as benign and a practical necessity. In her view, the illusion of the self (what she calls the "ultimate memeplex") obscures and distorts consciousness, and advocates adopting a Zen-like view to actively repel the self illusion.

Blackmore has provided a radically new and unique perspective that challenges the conventional thinking on many important issues in human cultural evolution. Though perhaps she pushes the theory farther than is warranted, the thoughtful reader will agree that Blackmore has made her case plausibly and forcefully. Time will tell how much of her theory ultimately turns out to be true.